When you were conceptualizing the mega-plot of the whole Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy, before you wrote the final book, The Ruin, did you really plan on having Iyraclea killed, or did the idea come to you later? Also, since Iyraclea is essentially Ed's character, did you tell him of your plan on what to do with her in your series?

Question #2: No, I didn't, although in retrospect, that would probably have been a good idea. Obviously, I did have the approval of my editor, or I would have been told to change that. To be honest, to me, the character in question was simply one I pulled out of a sourcebook. I had not (and have not) read every single piece of Realmslore, and I wasn't aware of any special connection between the character in question and the person you mention.

An interesting article, but I had to look up "cosplay controversy". My anecdotal experience is that "real" nerds are indeed socially awkward, especially around females, and will ogle like crazy but never dare approach or insult ... logically, this suggests that the non-nerds are the ones responsible for harassment, guys who just go to the party to hit on the hot chicks.

I share the positions you express in the essay, but I'm also of the opinion that girls who dress like Morrigan or Power Girl are not going to be timid sorts who fear the attention. I've overheard guys saying "she's asking for it", but that's just a cowardly self-justification to transfer the blame to the victim.

I enjoyed reading your blog post, particularly, "It’s good storytelling, and the suggestion that the movie should have spent time showing nice Iranians ignores the fact that no one tale can include everything. Writers must choose the elements that will create cohesive, compelling stories." Emphasis mine.

For the writer, I think it's important to remember you can't please everyone, all of the time.

Likewise for the reader, it's important to understand what viewpoint a story is coming from before judging something.

Also, we're slowly but surely trying to give all races their own identity. It's weird to me that a skum would call itself a skum, or a troglodyte would call itself a troglodyte.

Hence, the skum racial name is "ulat-kini."

For troglodytes, it's "Xulgath." Unlike the skum, though, we didn't decide on using that name (trivia time—Xulgath is the racial name for all lizard humanoids in my homebrew game) until recently, so we weren't able to get the word into the Bestiary.

It's a late addition, in other words, but that doesn't make it wrong.

You can expect us to probably do similar things for other races that have names that you wouldn't expect would be the names those races use for themselves. Catfolk and ratfolk and lizardfolk all come to mind...

Just out of curiosity, had they made that decision when you began working on Called to Darkness?

There is a rumour going around that I have found god. I think is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.Terry Pratchett

Audible.com is releasing four of my Forgotten Realms novels as audiobooks on 1/8/13. I'm hoping these will the first of many. The novels are the three books that make up the Year of Rogue Dragons plus Whisper of Venom. More info here:

quote:In today’s overcrowded entertainment marketplace, it may well be that any mention is better than none.

For the record, I loved most of your FR novels. The Haunted Lands is one of my favorite series of all time.

I was caught unprepared by the inclusion of dragonborn in the second and third book of The Brotherhood of the Griffon series. I generally avoid all scaly folk. I tried to make yours an exception, but unfortunately it didn't work out fine.

I was hesitant to grab The Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy, for obvious reason: dragons. I think of them as Realms fixture, so there's no way of completely avoiding them. But when one book has them in profusion, I'd normally shun it. What made me read TYoRD? Sammaster and Iyraclea. Did it turn out well? Yes--a bit better than I hoped.

One can never please everybody. Even your own die-hard fans may get disappointed once in a while. [I used to be a fan of Robert Jordan. His books are some of those few that I bothered pre-ordering. I gave up on Wheel of Time after the eight book, having realized that Jordan was rehashing the same formula over and over again.]

And this:

quote:If the reviewer didn’t like the book, nothing the author can say will persuade him he actually did.

True. When a reviewer writes something, most often than not, he already has made up his mind about it, and nothing--and I mean NOTHING--will ever change it. A relatively recent example I recall is Trudi Canavan's The Magician's Apprentice. I loved and extolled to the heavens The Black Magician Trilogy. But the former, I almost tore apart. Literally. I sympathized with her, for having to endure a series of misfortunes (personal, family matters) while writing TMA. But it didn't change my opinion on how trite she made TMA appear.